BLOG: Dashboard vs. Konfabulator, Gaming, ObjectDock Plus and more!
Thursday, July 1, 2004 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
I'm back from vacation. It was great to go to the gulf of Mexico with the wife and kids. We had a blast. Coming home was a bit of a pain due to weather and my summer cold came back to haunt me. My right ear is totally plugged up. Lots of crazy stuff happened last week. Apple announced MacOS 10.4 code-named "Tiger" with a feature called Dashboard. Dashboard is similar to DesktopX (which, btw, predates Konfabulator) but it is really a knock-off of a Mac program called Konfabulator. Not that the Apple-does-no-wrong zealots will admit to it. In their mind, Konfabulator is just a derivative of Apple's long defunct desktop accessories or even Active Desktop on Windows. Whatever. In the Apple zealots world, only Apple innovates. Next time Apple users bitch that Windows users are "stealing" some idea, remind them of Dashboard.
Also last week Microsoft made a new visual style for Windows XP Media Center edition called Royale. We updated SkinStudio 4.3 yesterday so that it can convert this visual style seamlessly to WindowBlinds format. I don't know why anyone would run it, it looks hideous in my opinion. It's basically a gradiated version of Luna. Meanwhile, with the GUI Olympics now complete and the prize patrol about to begin, the visual styles, skins, and icon packages are being migrated over to WinCustomize.com. Go here to get the WindowBlinds skins.
With the GUI Olympics skins added in, the WindowBlinds library at WinCustomize.com has grown to 2,990. It'll probably hit 3,000 within the week which is quite a milestone. Many good WindowBlinds skins are also at deviantART.
Meanwhile, work continues forward on ObjectDock Plus. We're running an internal beta of it. It has a lot of really cool features such as tabs, system tray support, really good auto hiding, plugins, etc. What I think makes it stand out is the usability features. Pity those won't show up in a screenshot. Regular ObjectDock remains (and will continue to remain) free. ObjectDock Plus will be like CursorXP in that it isn't part of Object Desktop but will be a stand alone program.
Getting back to DesktopX for a minute, version 2.2 is nearly done. DesktopX 2.2 is going to lose a feature though IconX. We've determined that one of the coolest features of DesktopX should really be its own program. So IconX will become its own program (part of Object Desktop still). Current DesktopX registered users will get a free license of IconX of course.
On the games side, Galactic Civilizations: Altarian Prophecy (the expansion pack to GalCiv) is doing really well. Stardock has also signed a bunch of games to go onto Drengin.net which will soon be rechristened. Will have more on that soon. The games side of things is really going to get interesting in the next few months as the technology back end for Object Desktop and WinCustomize gets applied to games. I don't know how many of you are gamers but for me, I get frustrated when a game isn't available at the store. After a few months, most games disappear from the shelves and many good titles never see the light of day on the shelves. That's where we're going with electronic distribution. We want to make it so that people can just press a button and download the game. And from then on be able to redownload as many times as needed. No DRM, no copy protection nonsense, no wrappers. Stardock Central 2 would handle the "activation" once and off you go. For me, that's the key, I lose CDs and I don't want to have to back up huge games to DVDs or something. I want to know that if I buy a game that 3 years from now if I format my drive and I lose the game that I can download Stardock Central and get all my games back in a few clicks. I don't know how many copies of Total Annihilation I have but I've bought several over the years because I've damaged CDs, lost them, misplaced serial #s, etc. That's something Drengin.net will address and I think will open the door for mainstreaming electronic distribution (just a note: there are places that will let you purchase and download a game but they come in wrappers and once you have it, it's yours, I'm pretty sure if you lose it you're up the creek, there's no sort of account management). The big thing about Drengin.net isn't just that you can purchase games one by one but rather that you can pay a fixed price and get everything. So for $100 you would get a dozen, two dozen, whatever games.
Well that's all for now! More soon.
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Reply #22 Friday, July 2, 2004 6:21 PM
I'm not trying to argue, I'm just setting the record straight.
We all know Apple isn't always the innovator, but they are much more innovative than Microsoft, and Microsoft's Third Party developers
Reply #23 Friday, July 2, 2004 9:15 PM
Oh, and Windowblinds rules, and does not work "against the grain".
Reply #24 Saturday, July 3, 2004 2:15 AM
SirMacrobyte: Being a 3rd party developer on Windows doesn't nessasarily mean you are affiliated with Microsoft. Nor does it mean that no one who buys a PC can think of something innovative. That sounds too elitist.
Reply #25 Saturday, July 3, 2004 2:30 AM
I think that considering Apple's past innovations, and the fact that this sort of thing (Dashboard from Konfab) happens all the time with other companies and is tolerated, it should be tolerated for Apple as well.
I do still think, however, that Dashboard is a very universal concept... It's like the seatbelt. Just because Volvo invented it first doesn't mean other car makers can't use them in their cars. Apple expanded on a universal idea that had been expanded on by many other companies, like Stardock's DX, Microsoft's Active Desktop, and Arlo Rose's Konfabulator.
Also, the term "Widget" is a universal computer term, and had been around long before DX and konfabulator came around
Reply #26 Saturday, July 3, 2004 8:34 PM
No more Icon X with DX? Well I don't like that but I have to admit that I have the feature turned off on my computer (mostly because some of the icons I want on my desktop don't enlarge well and I don't feel like making new icons with Icon Developer... or really I didn't have enough time to do so)
Reply #27 Saturday, July 3, 2004 10:04 PM
Apple left "Color Labels" out when they moved from OS 9 to OS X. Unsanity software came along and released "Labels X" to fill the void. When Apple got around to 10.3 and re-implemented them you didn't see Unsanity crying about it. They simply enhanced their existing app to make it even more powerful.
...but hey, some people are drama queens and everybody likes a soap opera conspiracy.
Reply #28 Sunday, July 4, 2004 1:26 PM
As it stands it's a great app rendered all but useless for game players.
Reply #29 Wednesday, July 7, 2004 9:27 AM
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Reply #21 Friday, July 2, 2004 5:18 PM